


The Night Someone Else Was the Voice of Night Vale

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Dark Owl Records, Gen, No Tentacles, and a special musical guest - Freeform, some tigers - Freeform, strange happenings, voice magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil and Carlos attend a Very Special Concert at Dark Owl Records. </p><p> </p><p>So do some tigers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Someone Else Was the Voice of Night Vale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hannah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/gifts).



Clocks do not work, and time does not work, and because of these factors, Carlos cannot say how long the concert lasts. It lasts forever. It lasts an instant. 

He's never been to a concert at Dark Owl Records before, mostly because whenever he hears about one, it sounds like a thing which cannot exist, and because in the time he's lived in Night Vale, most shows announced for Dark Owl have been dead people.

He doesn't know if he is glad to have come to this one. Beside him, Cecil is still, and quiet, and he has never really known Cecil to be either. It is as if there is something in him, as he keeps his attention, rapt, upon the woman on stage. Something that stretches out to hold him tight-wound in place, something supernatural to explain how still, how quiet, Cecil has gone. 

Her hair is bright red, flowing like lava down the mountains of her black-clad shoulders, and her focus is laserlike upon her craft, and to the left and the right of them there are tigers. Carlos wants to shout, run, something. Actual tigers.

The tigers sit politely, their paws folded, their golden eyes-- like Cecil's-- in perfect concentration upon the stage. Carlos knows that tigers do not purr and yet he cannot shake the question of whether these will. 

The staff is excited, he can tell that much-- he doesn't think any of their concerts have ever gone over so well. Possibly because they rarely give real dates or times for their impossible, non-existent shows. Some watch, some go about their work, but their mood is palpable, high. The night is a triumph.

Old Woman Josie sits beside one of the tigers, with one gnarled, wizened hand upon a solid, stripey shoulder. Carlos wonders what the fur of a tiger might feel like. How soft or how coarse, how warm. He doesn't dare touch the one that sits beside him, doesn't dare disturb its perfect concentration upon the stage. 

He tries not to think about the tigers, which no one else considers strange. A large segment of the town's population has turned out, as well as a few tourists, and only the tourists had taken any note whatsoever of the tigers. Those who stayed, he could hear talking amongst themselves before the show's start, settled on believing that the tigers were tame, somehow a part of some show-- if not this one, another show, a local circus or something, that they were perfectly harmless, perfectly safe. He heard them say these things to each other with a hidden desperation and he knows it absolutely is not true.

The tigers are tigers.

The singer is a man man man man man maneater and so is the tiger at Carlos' side. So is the tiger at Cecil's, a more horrifying thought, for Cecil is so utterly rapt and so frozen that Carlos thinks he would not even notice if his throat was ripped out and what would anyone in the town do without Cecil's throat? What would Carlos do, without Cecil?

Tenderly, tenderly, words filter through the obsessive worries that trip him up. He sees tears gather in the corners of Cecil's eyes, though no change comes over his expression. 

She sings, of bittersweet memories, and Carlos hears-- though there are no lyrics so specific-- tales of reeducation, 're-training', and he takes and squeezes Cecil's hand and wishes it would squeeze back, because he can't stand that thought much longer.

She sings, about the moon, and Carlos hears-- though she has never met him-- Cecil, Cecil at his worst and his loneliest, Cecil wondering if the world around him exists, Cecil challenging that selfsame moon. Two things that Carlos knows exist, absolutely, and two things which Cecil doubts.

She sings, about tigers, and the tigers that flank them weep and bow their heads, and gaze back up with soulful-sweet frowns, and they are wild and they are dangerous, but in that moment Carlos trusts that tonight at least, they will do no harm, not to anyone at the show.

She sings, about loves and secrets and regrets and telephone poles, and Carlos hears himself and understands how tigers might weep when he thinks of never having spoken to Cecil for personal reasons, of hiding from the frightening awkward tangle that personal reasons leave him in, of how he could have gone to his grave without the rush that that tangle can bring.

She sings and sings and sings. Carlos hears Josie, and Tamika Flynn, and Dana. He hears John Peters-- you know, the farmer? He hears Mayor Pamela Winchell and he hears his own poor confused scientists struggling through, he hears the Faceless Old Woman who lives in his house and a man whose face he can never remember and he hears...

He hears Night Vale.

When the show ends, and the tigers become a noble company to escort the singer and crew out of the record store, the tension wire in Cecil is cut, or snaps. He lays his head on Carlos' shoulder with a sigh, his gaze distant, his cheeks wet, and he mouths words that Carlos isn't quite ready to know. He knows, if he were to read Cecil's lips, that they would be lyrics, and he is afraid to know which song they come from, afraid that he already knows. 

He offers his arm around Cecil's waist and his labcoat draped over Cecil's shoulders, and they watch together, as the crowd disperses, lost and found anew, into the twilit town he's come to call his own.


End file.
